


home is in the water

by aishiteita



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Water
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 04:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aishiteita/pseuds/aishiteita
Summary: Jeon Wonwoo has always been in the water, even when dry on land, since many years ago.(He dripped silver and bled black, cutting wood and driving splinters into his hands.)The pond never moves.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> HI YALL i know... i should be working on the beat au.............. but i live in the goddamned northwest it rains all the time and This Fits The Fic so here we go !
> 
> also it has been rotting in my docs since sept and i need to Do This.
> 
> ((friends im sorry i havent read all ur lovely works i swear i will once i finish this semester <333)))
> 
> big shoutout to my actual Momther bc how would i ever write without u

The birds cry obnoxiously outside his office's window; a grating noise against his migraine, indicating that it must be a little over six and he has to go home or clock in for overtime. Flapping wings overlap with the steady _clack clack clack_ of another teacher typing furiously in the other side of the room.

Wonwoo yawns, loud and graceless, his spine popping grotesquely as he stretches his arms up. Neat stacks of ungraded papers from the afternoon, to be dealt with the following day because Wonwoo dislikes the idea of having the school's effects in his home. He pushes his chair back, the noise gathering the other teacher's attention. She watches him gather his coat with dazed eyes.

"Good work today," Wonwoo tells her in time with his long strides, giving her a hopefully encouraging nod as he closed the door shut behind him.

There's something inherently draining about evening buses, the collective exhales of bodies jam-packed against each other forming its own muggy summer when it's already mid-autumn. He gets off at the fifth stop, but instead of boarding the station as he usually does to get back to his little flat several blocks away, Wonwoo's feet take him elsewhere. The last bus to _someplace_ , _somewhere_ is departing in ten minutes, and Wonwoo catches it in time, vision blurry and head suddenly heavy as the driver greets him aboard. No luggage, save for the bags under his eyes.

The sky is a violent orange that reminds Wonwoo of some distant, far-off memory that he can't quite grasp at the moment. He tried to disentangle the memories; a plot of land deep within the woods by his father's old house where he spent the last few years of his adolescence in, _someplace_ , _somewhere_ having more charm as a home compared to his actual home. A void that isn't collapsing into itself as much as it is swelling in the dark, a mass of black that clings.

"Stopping here!" he shouts out to the driver from his seat at the far back of the bus; clear and automatic. He clambers off the vehicle and doesn't know where he is exactly even though the air smells familiar, rain with notes of rotting grass. The area is notably humid; Wonwoo's hands uncomfortably stick to the pleather of his briefcase, mind worried for the wooden ring on his right pinky.

He's always been cautious of the artifact, unfailingly removing it from his sweaty finger in the summers, when he showers. But he can't part with it for long, the ring always close-by, be it by his pillow come morning or in the breast pocket of his shirt when he cooks. The one time it chipped, Wonwoo took an entire day off work to get it fixed—he brought it to the only luthier in town who coated the ring in thick varnish that reflected Wonwoo's relieved smile.

"Must be important to you," the luthier commented. Wonwoo nodded dumbly out of courtesy, inexplicable guilt surging over him like a tide to a worn-out bay, possessing his entire being with the need to up and go, leave everything behind to visit some rundown house in the middle of nowhere. Like what he's doing right now.

This isn't Wonwoo's first trip to _someplace_ , _somewhere_. The sunsets barely differ, and he recalls the damp grip of his loose fist while forest greens and underwater blacks overtake his mind. He can never remember whatever happens after, though—the trip becomes a fast-forwarded movie with an impossible framerate, its epilogue being his waking up the next morning, in his own bed, tear tracks drying on his cheeks. This is how it's been for the past ten years, ever since Wonwoo and his father moved into that overly huge mansion by the woods.

(And he couldn't live there—he just couldn't. Four years in the house was all it took to break the rest of his family because they were too hollow in the heart, rotting holes in their chests and it got too loud to stay under the same roof, their own loneliness echoing back from old walls that were too far apart from each other. He was twenty-two when he moved out.)

Clarity arrived after dark when Wonwoo hops off the bus, driver a blur along with the rest of his memories but he's never felt better. He feels attuned to every blade of grass against the soles of his shoes as he treks upon the path leading up a hill, through the woods, into a forest—foliage silver-rimmed in the mid-autumn moonlight. The beaten path thins and trails off to a naturally canopied lane, leading him down to a shallow crater, empty and uninhabited.

Fall winds usher Wonwoo to pick up his pace, chills running up and down his spine to force his legs into a light jog up a second hill, a rundown house beyond it with peeling blue paint and dusty windows. He looks past his shoulder; the crater calls out to him in migraine-inducing waves, like frustration and fingers grasping at the vaguest _something_ in the oblivion of _somewhere_. He can't reach beyond the concept of aged longing, an emotion akin to desperation caging it away.

The door opens, narrowly missing Wonwoo's nose as it swings out before his knuckles can even brush against the old wood. There's a boy staring up at him with a large grin on his face, looking slightly out of breath and slowly, the memories sharpen, fuzzy edges coming back into focus starting from the fine strands of dark hair falling over the boy's forehead.

"Had a feeling you'd be visiting," the boy says levelly, like he'd been practicing the line for a while. Wonwoo takes note of his front teeth, larger than the rest, the squint pushing his cheeks up when he smiles reminding Wonwoo of _someone_ else, _someone_ who grinned more if not just as wide, moonlight against silver sickle.

"Chan," Wonwoo mutters, memories of a short boy with cow-licked hair at the front of his mind. Maybe it's because he can't remember his visits here that every time he sees Chan, it's a surprising affair. All Wonwoo's brain can muster are images of chubby cheeks and stubby limbs, head which barely reached his stomach now level with his nose.

"Do you know why you're here?" Chan asks. The pleading, hopeful tone of his voice doesn't escape Wonwoo's ears.

"I don't," says Wonwoo with a bit of regret when he sees the bright smile dim down to a slight tug at the corners of Chan's lips. He gives a similar grin of his own, and it's all somber between them as if they were late to a funeral. Wonwoo's left hand strays to pick at his ring, twisting it about his pinky restlessly. While the memories aren't there, the feelings remain in the deeper recesses of his mind, getting stronger with every swipe of his thumb across the fast-disappearing varnish on the ring. Chan stops him, fingertips soft and cold.

"Hey, it's okay," he whispers, soothing. "Maybe you'll remember after a cup of tea or two. Come in, it's getting late."

He has test papers to grade, worksheets to write, and a pending literature review; Chan's fingers slip away, and Wonwoo's hand twitches, wanting to follow.

"I'd like that," he says instead.


	2. come into the water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya . i listen to mitski. what about it

**i.**

**come into the water**

 

 

Wonwoo graduated high school the same day his mother left the family. It was springtime; she went out for errands, didn't come home for three days, and Wonwoo didn't bother asking why after his father conspicuously left the divorce papers out on the dining table.

Two days after this was when they received news of her death: body found rotting away on a riverbank.

Two weeks of spring break was all the time he had to process this while moving to the suburbs, his father announcing it like it was the weather, and Wonwoo collecting his entire childhood into cardboard boxes while his father took down haunting pictures of his mother. The last thing she ever said to Wonwoo was, "Please do the laundry."

"I'm sorry, Wonwoo," his father told him every now and then. Their new house was large enough for a family of six, but there were only two of them. "Things will be alright."

"It's already alright," he'd reply most of the time.

Wonwoo left his father to drown himself in work, back curved deeper by each passing day as his shoulders narrowed and curled into his chest. Wonwoo saw red eyes more often than not, teary from staring at the computer for hours on end in a dimly-lit room. None for his dead wife, however. He didn't even cry during the funeral. Pained knuckles and sore wrists paid the bills, so Wonwoo didn't comment much on his father's deteriorating physique, simply snuck into his study quietly from time to time to rub at his stiff joints. So his days went by as such: wake up, eat, go back to sleep, contemplate a gap year, go to sleep, eat, get dinner ready and massage his father's bony hands, grab a book from his study, not sleep, sleep.

This was how they cope. The figure known as _mother_ had never existed in their household, and therefore its loss would lose impact.

(The thing is, the loss had dealt its damage, and Wonwoo knew just as much as his father did that they weren't recovering, not anytime soon.)

It was cold when Wonwoo's heated fingertips met the windows by the door; his raincoat was still boxed up somewhere in his room, but he already had a book chosen for his Saturday afternoon reading, and no, if he were to stay any longer in his house he would smash every dishware he could see. The woods across his yard was humid and its dome of green trapped all the chill within, cold sweat dotting Wonwoo's nose. His glasses slipped constantly.

Wonwoo found a decent looking tree to read under, and it starts pouring. Fall rain clothed his surroundings under a silver veil, and Wonwoo's feet hurried to a drier path, where the soil was lighter and the raindrops hit softer. The path was a densely-canopied lane, and Wonwoo clutched his book close by his chest as he trudged on the lane that stretched to forever before he saw the other end, raindrops as drapes. Past the heavy downpour was a peculiar, barely-agitated pond; mirror in the middle of the mud, ripples calm as it echoed from a boy, lounging chest-deep in the water.

No rain touched the boy. Water dripped down his face, lined his hair and disappeared into skin, but it was not rain. He gleamed in the dim sunlight.

"You're not supposed to be here," the boy chided, voice unobstructed by the booming thunder and crashing of rain behind Wonwoo. The voice did not carry itself in any ethereal manner its owner wielded; it was concrete, real. But it was so impossibly soft in its warning and Wonwoo forgot that he might be impossibly lost.

"I'm pretty sure this is public property," he shouted, hoping that he was loud enough to be heard past the rain.

The boy made what might be a displeased face. Wonwoo couldn't tell clearly, canopy thinned enough towards the end of the lane that rain was dripping down his forehead into his eyes while his hair falls over his line of sight in thick, dark clumps. The rain pricked bone-deep as drops trickled down his skin.

"It isn't," came the voice again, clarity inhuman as it echoed about Wonwoo's skull. The boy swam to the bank and folded his arms upon the dry grass to watch Wonwoo intently. His gaze burned, but Wonwoo couldn't shy away, too cold to function. "New blood, aren't you?"

"Is that what you people here call new neighbors?" Wonwoo stammered, tongue growing just as numb as his fingers. The air he inhaled was too sharp and overwhelming to be fall, fresh petrichor shooting straight up to his brain. Wonwoo couldn't help but inch forward towards the boy and his little oasis of a pond, sopping wet and his book's pages wrinkling in his grip.

The boy stayed quiet, wordlessly staring at Wonwoo like it was a challenge. So Wonwoo accepted, stepping closer to the pond with rising trepidation as stark black eyes hollowed out his torso. Past the mud and wet greenery was too much silver—silver hair, silver surface, silver reflected against skin visually untouched by the sun. The boy made fall look like summer, catching all the sunlight Wonwoo could not feel, holding it hostage.

It was by the pond's edge that Wonwoo first registered the thought, _this is a bad idea._

"Horrible rain," the boy drawled, voice more audible from this distance and infinitely more human. "My pond is all cold now. It's because the woods hate you."

"I haven't done anything wrong," Wonwoo retorted, wanting so badly to cross over towards the boy, fall into the gentle waters of the pond. Regardless of what the boy said, nothing could be as cold as the rain hammering down his back right now.

"Sit on the edge," the boy commanded, "take your shoes off and dip your feet into the water."

Wonwoo wanted to do as he's told, but he didn't want to get any wetter than he already was. His book had a leather hardcover, edges dampened and therefore ruined; he had to hold it with both arms, curl his body around it to shield the book from the rain. He shook his head in response because his lips might have fallen off his face and he wouldn't have known otherwise if it weren't for the fact that he couldn't move them, teeth no longer a part of his mouth as it quivered against his will.

The boy's gaze softened considerably as he reassured Wonwoo, "Don't worry about your book, I'll take care of it. Trust me."

Wonwoo did not trust the boy. He did not find his soft gaze reassuring, he did not want to hand over his book—his late mother's book—to this stranger. But he toed his sneakers off, mud and wet canvas squelching under his feet. His knees were too stiff to get rid of the soaked socks clinging onto his skin without the help of his hand but he was desperate for warmth and that was what the pond would give him.

The boy extended a hand out, skin of collected sunshine as water dripped languidly from the boy's elbow, merely inches away from Wonwoo.

"How do I know you're not lying? That I'm not dreaming you up?" Wonwoo asked, close enough that he no longer had to raise his voice.

"You don't know," the boy told him frankly. His arm didn't waver, fingers still, palm open. "But I can't tell lies. This is the truth."

As much as Wonwoo wanted to call out the boy's horrible logic, thin mud was seeping into his threadbare socks, tickling the soles of his feet with utmost discomfort. The wind blew stronger, tundra enveloping his torso in the form of a completely soaked shirt. "Okay," he whispered, more to himself than the boy before him, and gently placed the book into his waiting palm. Wonwoo bent down to finally peel the socks off his feet, the skin of his soles wrinkly and stained brown from the soil. He stuffed the dirty socks into his equally soiled shoes before peering through his hair again, convinced that the chills had gotten into his head and the boy would no longer be there once he looked up. The tiny rocks under his feet, however, felt real.

Wonwoo looked up to the boy gently opening his book, right at the middle. He proceeded to lay it down on the pond's edge, to which Wonwoo nearly protested until he saw how the grass there was dry, bits of twig light brown and pebbles dusty. He watched the pages crinkle and curl up as moisture escaped them.

He took one, two, three shaky steps forward, before his left foot had nowhere else to go but into the water. He crouched low, hands steadying the rest of his body as he pushed his legs out, dipped them into the cool pond heels-first. There was no crashing wave, his calf cutting cleanly through the tranquil surface like a knife through clay. When Wonwoo looked up once more, it was to night-black eyes, hair the color of the moon or maybe mercury, drying in the warm breeze he was suddenly enveloped in. No rain touched him, his shirt sticking on his skin still but without feeling like imminent pneumonia. He peered over his shoulder and true enough, rain was still pouring in the woods behind him, fat drops stabbing like arrows into mud that was quickly flooding, water rising above the blades of grass.

"It's safe here," the boy said, reclining until he was floating on his back. "The rain should stop soon."

Wonwoo shook his head, in a poor attempt to dry his hair and get a grip of himself. He dragged his hands over his face, held them in place there. "How?"

"How what?" The clouds parted above them and thin rays of gold pierced through, making him feel like none of this was real, that Wonwoo really shouldn't be here, shouldn't be sharing the same space as what couldn't possibly be human, the way the boy smiled slightly in the embrace of lukewarm water, eyes closed with lashes stuck in neat clumps.

"How is this pond—no, how do you, uh, look the way you do?" In a last-ditch effort to salvage the conversation, Wonwoo added, "Won't the school mind?"

"It's been like this since I could remember," the boy shot back with a light chuckle, absentmindedly carding his fingers through strands of silver. "I don't go to school."

"Huh." The sudden onslaught of warmth drew out the weariness in Wonwoo—the contrast of cold wind against his back and warm sun on his face a little jarring, like a fever on the verge of breaking. "That's weird."

The boy turned to look at him, and Wonwoo felt the strangest sort of elation, some odd sense of accomplishment when the boy beamed at him, teeth showing and all. Wonwoo thought he could be smiling back. He couldn't really feel his face yet despite his shirt already half-dry.

"What's your name?" Wonwoo asked, words slurred together and drowsy as he shifted his weight onto his elbows, perched comfortably on his knees. He quickly glanced up to see the skies clearing past the treetops. "I'm Wonwoo."

A beat of silence, before the boy's smile turned into something of a grimace, quickly disappearing into a slight frown. "You can call me... Hoshi," he said in an almost chastising manner, secretive and somewhat guilty. "Wonwoo, never tell someone your name when they ask for it in these woods."

"Why not?"

The boy—Hoshi—looked contemplative for a couple of seconds, then shook his head with a small smile. It was unsettling. "You don't need to worry about that. Hey, how about a deal?"

Wonwoo laughed, avoiding Hoshi's eyes while his head lolled onto his right shoulder, legs swaying minutely in the water. The pond was by no means small, measuring about two king-sized beds large and Wonwoo couldn't help but remember his mother and the kiddie pool he used to play in when he was seven. The water felt just like this pond, even though it came from their garden hose; lukewarm and soft, but too dense for him to wade through, as if he was in quicksand.

"A deal," he scoffed, inhaling grass and soil but no petrichor, no wet humus, none of his mother's rose perfume either. "You just told me not to trust anything in these woods."

Hoshi shrugged. "But by stepping into _my_ pond, you're trusting me."

 _My pond_. Wonwoo raised his eyebrows slightly, letting Hoshi's logic settle in his mind which had been trying steadily to shut down from how comfortable it felt here, in this pond that was apparently not public property. He apologized, non-verbally because it didn't matter who the pond belonged to anyway in this godforsaken part of the woods. "What's the deal?" he caved, puckering at thin air.

There was something undeniably alien about the way Hoshi moved; he was all fluid motions, lacking the colors that would make one human. But there was a light dusting of pink on his cheeks when he smiled, and Wonwoo decides that he liked seeing Hoshi smile, because it made him feel less like he was talking to a specter, like he was talking to a friend instead. He banished the thoughts because they were starting to give him cold feet, and he was trying to enjoy the sun-kissed water.

"Bring me a book every time you come here," Hoshi requested sheepishly, sinking a bit deeper into the pond, "and you can consider this your safe place."

"If I don't need or want a safe place?" Wonwoo mumbled, fighting back a yawn. Beyond the treetops were no longer grey skies—he should go home soon.

"Then you wouldn't be wandering about the woods in the first place."

Wonwoo decided that aside from Hoshi's smile, he liked how this stranger did not know him and thus would not pity him. Sharp words and sharp eyes were refreshing amidst the dull backdrop Wonwoo felt he had to set for himself.

"You're desperately lonely," Wonwoo sneered.

"Aren't you?" Hoshi echoed back to him, less bitter and definitely cheekier, grin maybe mesmerizing and Wonwoo had stared long enough to remember that his front teeth were larger than the rest.

Hoshi did not reply instantly, instead reaching for Wonwoo's book which was still open and drying in the sun. Smooth fingers carefully picked the book up from the grass, the action effortless and most graceful. Those very fingers then began to sift through the pages with vague interest that stirred something up in Wonwoo. Maybe it was not Hoshi, but just him who was in fact, desperately lonely.

"Deal," Wonwoo said at last, drifting to an airy laugh as his elbows gave out, forcing him to fall back onto the grass with his legs in the water, face towards the now-present sun. The last thing he heard before drifting off to sleep was a chuckle, followed by the home-like sound of fingers running through curled pages.

Stray thoughts; lonely and lonely together may make company. Wonwoo quickly shut that down too.

***

When Wonwoo woke, it was to the off-white of his new room's ceiling, looking more grey from the night sky, moonlight casting long shadows against the floor as he sat up to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

 _Seven thirty-five_ , the clock on his nightstand read. He couldn't recall walking home, or if Hoshi brought him back for that matter, but his shoes were neatly placed under his bed, socks stuffed inside the sneakers, damp to the touch still. His book was nowhere in sight, a confirmation that whatever had transpired over the afternoon was very much real, and Wonwoo had no way of escaping it.

Wonwoo sluggishly dragged himself into the bathroom, limbs sluggish from what must've been about four hours of sleep. The running water from the faucet was nowhere like that of the pond, as if they were two different elements entirely. A few silly thoughts of how exactly Hoshi could've brought him home was washed away with his face—Wonwoo noted the slight redness across his cheeks, sun-kissed for fall.

"Where have you been?" Wonwoo's father asked him when he entered the study, feet creating static against the carpet floor. There might have been a tinge of concern in his voice; either that or Wonwoo was still delusional from his afternoon excursion. "Your dinner has gone cold."

"I'll microwave it later," Wonwoo replied without much thought, food being the last thing on his mind as he perused the fictional shelf for something about water. He did not walk in expecting to find a book about Hoshi or his pond in particular; he just wanted to prolong the mood, the state he was in. It had been so long since he picked up a book that wasn't his mother's, or something about loss

"Go have your dinner," his father commanded, barely sparing him a glance from his computer. Wonwoo gave up browsing and settles for some random article from the study's academic archive, swiping the thin clipping off the shelf and shuffling out of the study silently.

Piping hot instant lasagna cooled on the plate as Wonwoo leafed through what was ironically a paper on merfolk lore. It was probably the twelfth picture of a mermaid he had seen in the past hour, and he gave up at that. Hoshi was no merfolk; he was chalk dust and strands of fishing line. But now Wonwoo couldn't envision the exact silver as clearly as he would've liked, the grey circle around his father's irises interfering with the memory. He returned the paper, bid his father good night, and retreated to his bedroom despite having woken up barely a couple hours ago.

Sleep was a fleeting with the thoughts of his mother plaguing him each night, but Wonwoo dialed time back to when Hoshi flipped through the pages of his book and let his eyelids slip shut with a sharp exhale. Visions of hair dripping mercury and oblivion for eyes leapt to the forefront of his mind. Wonwoo should've been scared, but he wasn't, not really. There was curiosity, and he was the cat, and even though he felt this close to being doomed some way or another, Wonwoo couldn't help but helplessly huff a chuckle, bringing an arm over his eyes. He hoped Hoshi wouldn't get the wrong idea about him, because the hardcover was some tribute to Immanuel Kant and only realizing this tidbit now made him want to ram his head into the nearest tree or lie down in his bed, as he was, stewing in his own embarrassment that was teetering closer to mortification. He was grinning far too much for someone supposedly in mourning.

Wonwoo kicked his blankets, leaving his calves and feet bare against the cool breeze of his fan in a poor mimicry of his afternoon. Foliage brushed against the glass of his window, rustling rhythmically in a manner that fooled his brain to think it to be rain. It didn't feel like his feet were cutting clay, lack of lukewarm currents making him highly aware of the wind tickling his leg hair. But with the rest of his body warm like this, sleep came easy.


End file.
